Satan's plan, the Ku Klux Klan and Supreme Court prostitution are not typically topics of discussion in the staid U.S. Senate. But Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., brought up all three during an otherwise fairly dry Judiciary Committee on two of President Donald Trump's nominees for federal judgeships.

While fleeting and seemingly bizarre, Kennedy's questions served to highlight his growing frustration with the Trump White House, its judicial nomination process and some of the nominees themselves. He directed them Wednesday (Nov. 29) to Washington D.C. lawyer Kyle Duncan, whom Trump wants to put on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, and Associate Justice David Stras of the Minnesota Supreme Court, whom Trump nominated for the 8th U.S. Circuit Court in St. Louis.

Each answered no when the first-year senator asked whether he had ever blogged in support of the Ku Klux Klan, described a child as being part of Satan's plan or called a Supreme Court justice a prostitute. Three other Trump picks have been accused of these things:

Jeff Mateer, nominated for the Tyler-based federal court of the Eastern District of Texas, said this in a 2015 speech, according to CNN: "In Colorado, a public school has been sued because a first grader -- and I forget the sex. She's a girl who thinks she's a boy or a boy who thinks she's a girl -- ... and the school said, 'Well, she's not using the girl's restroom.' And so she has now sued to have a right to go in. Now, I submit to you, a parent of three children who are now young adults, a first grader really knows what their sexual identity? I mean it just really shows you how Satan's plan is working and the destruction that's going on."

Brett Talley, selected for the Montgomery-based court for the Middle District of Alabama, defended the honor of the early Ku Klux Klan in a 2011 post on a TideFans.com, according to slate.com.

Damien Schiff, in line for a seat on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, wrote in 2007 that Associate Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy was akin to a "judicial prostitute," according to politico.com.

Sen. Kennedy is showing signs of rebelling against the GOP president's judicial nominees. He is the only Republican senator to have voted against confirming one, Gregory Katsas for a seat on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and he has has said he would vote "in a heartbeat" against confirming Talley. While expressing approval of Duncan's resume and ideology, he has thus far withheld support for that nominee.

On Wednesday, Kennedy also made a point of challenging what he said was the implication by Duncan, in a questionnaire for the Judiciary Committee, that he joined Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., in putting forth Duncan's name for the judgeship.

"I first learned about Mr. Duncan's nomination when I received a phone call, actually a series of phone calls, from Mr. Don McGahn, who is White House counsel. And Mr. McGahn was very firm that Mr. Duncan would be the nominee, to the point that he was on the scare side in one conversation of being polite."